Mediagazer: Boston Globe publisher Chris Mayer plans changes even as paper is up for sale (Jon Chesto/Boston Business Journal)

1:25 PM ET, March 29, 2013

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Kyle Stock / Businessweek:

Amazon Likely Paid $1 Billion for Goodreads — Valuing a social network is part art, part science, and part nonsense, but the spectrum has narrowed a bit in the past couple of years as sites like Pinterest and Twitter closed financing rounds and companies like LinkedIn hit public markets.

Laura Hazard Owen / paidContent:

“First do no harm”: My interview with Amazon and Goodreads on the future of Goodreads — Amazon announced Thursday afternoon that it has acquired the popular book-related social networking site Goodreads for an undisclosed sum. I spoke with Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler and Amazon's VP …

Discussion: Amazon.com, Forbes, New York Times, Tools of Change for Publishing, Publishers Lunch, Melville House Books, PublishersWeekly.com, Publishing Perspectives, Wired, TechCrunch, PandoDaily, Daily Dot and Fast Company

Drew Olanoff / TechCrunch:
Amazon Acquires Social Reading Site Goodreads, Which Gives The Company A Social Advantage Over Apple

Discussion: PublishersWeekly.com, Forbes, paidContent, Consumerist, The Next Web, Goodreads, Softpedia News, The Wrap, Gizmodo, Betabeat, Pocket-lint, AllThingsD and @rafat

Brian Stelter / New York Times:

NPR to End ‘Talk of the Nation’ — BOSTON — NPR is ending the 21-year-old call-in radio show “Talk of the Nation” and encouraging local stations to replace it with an expanded version of “Here and Now,” an afternoon newscast that is produced here. — The plan, announced Friday …

Discussion: NPR, Poynter, Yahoo! News, NPR, Politico, The Huffington Post and The Wrap

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

BuzzFeed launching longform ‘BuzzReads’ section — BuzzFeed's longform content will now have a place to linger: A new section called “BuzzReads” launches today. “It's BuzzFeed for people who are afraid of BuzzFeed,” the site's longform editor, Steve Kandell, told Poynter in a phone call Thursday night.

Christopher Heine / Adweek:

Business Insider's Slideshows Are Now Ads, Too — Business Insider has become known all-too-well for making its site sticky with a constant procession of topical or newsy slideshows. — Well, the New York-based digital publisher this week started to monetize the idea with a sponsored gallery ad unit …

Dan Reimold / MediaShift:
Business Insider Just Told College Students Their Secrets of Success

Discussion: @petersterne, @abrams, College Media Matters and @thestalwart

Brian Steinberg / Variety:

News Corp. Confirms Launch of New Cable Outlet, FXX … Does an extra X garner more $? — News Corp. is gambling that it will. The entertainment conglomerate confirmed Thursday that it would launch a second general-entertaiment cable network as a companion to its FX network and its FXM outlet …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Screen Rant, The Inquisitr, seattlepi.com, Associated Press, Broadcasting & Cable, Wall Street Journal, Adweek and The Huffington Post

Tim Carmody / The Verge:

President of HBO Sports says HBO Go will stream live events by the end of this year — But HBO spokesman denies that HBO Go will feature live boxing — At Harvard Law School's Sports Law Symposium today, HBO Sports president Ken Hershman said that live sports would be on HBO Go by the end of this year …

Discussion: VentureBeat and WebProNews

Keith J. Kelly / New York Post:

Ex-Daily Beaster Felsenthal heads to Time.com — Ed Felsenthal, an ex-Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor and No. 2 to Tina Brown at the Daily Beast, is joining Time as the new managing editor of Time.com, Media Ink has learned. — Felsenthal left Newsweek/Daily Beast at the end of 2011 …

Discussion: Folio, Poynter and FishbowlNY

Sara Morrison / Columbia Journalism Review:

Flipboard upgrades, Guardian signs on — The Guardian gives social sharing another try — Flipboard, the app that calls itself “your social magazine,” introduced version 2.0 on Tuesday. Where the first generation created magazines out of social media feeds, this one allows its users to play a more active role.

Discussion: Folio and HubSpot's Inbound …

Jon Chesto / Boston Business Journal:

Boston Globe publisher Chris Mayer plans changes even as paper is up for sale — If Chris Mayer is sweating the fact that The Boston Globe is going to have a new owner soon, he isn't showing it. The Globe's publisher tells me his team is moving ahead with plans for changes in 2013 …

Mathew Ingram / GigaOM:

Watch out, internet: Dave Winer is back in the business of making blogging tools — He may not have the same kind of public profile as the teenaged founder who sold his company to Yahoo for $30 million, or the founders of hot apps like SnapChat or Instagram, but Dave Winer has done a lot …

Hollywood Reporter:

State-Owned Chinese Film Studio Sues Apple — Shanghai Animation Film Studio claims the Cupertino-based tech giant sold its films in the iTunes store without proper permission. — A State-owned Chinese animation studio has filed suit against Apple in a Beijing court …